GPS is going to be a hit and miss in India. Many times, you cannot look at the road and determine which way the traffic is supposed to flow. Constructions are announced at a fairly brisk pace, and get completed in the contractor's leisure. The end result is that traffic gets rerouted fairly regularly, and no gps is usually good enough to catch up with all this drama. Add to it that every state has their RTO and none of them are centrally linked.

Long story short, the best on-screen navigation solution that I would recommend is google maps on android. Requires a data plan and a working cell connection, but thats a given in 90% of the places you might visit. If you insist on an offline solution, I've heard good things about mapmyindia.com. I haven't used it, but two of my friends are happy in their cars.

Of course, the best solution is paper maps. As was pointed out earlier, the better solution is eicher maps. The one that I used to own looks like this: http://www.flipkart.com/india-road-a...=9789380262376, but i remember it being less pricey. Another thing that always works for me is to stop at a tea shop, and ask for directions. It's very 20th century, but works most of the time

Essentially people who are in charge of making the rules and regulations for traffic in each state. I think financial incentives are given to officials who come up with uniquely stupid rules (such as no roof luggage racks on private cars, allowed in case of taxies of the same make - Gujarat), so there are always surprises.

Mapmyindia has fairly accurate maps , IMO better than CN or satguide, Good directions can be had at the local taxi stand or at any local business. But they are not as good as the GPS for getting you back to your hotel in town. Most of the small towns have been mapped. You'd benefit entering the places you want to go to/stay at beforehand as waypoints and using the unit to help navigate the last few kilometres.

Try the google Navigator from your Android phone. So far, that is the best GPS navigation I have found in India. I have tried Sygic maps and mapmyindia, but nothing comes close to Google.

You can mount ur phone top the handle bars using one of the RAM mounts and keep the phone charged with a 12v socket n cable and save $100 by not buying a GPS device.

Nepal:
Came back from a 10 days ride in Nepal. The only maps I used for a physical paper map book. Cost around 400 rupees Nepali Currency. U can not get lost in the East-West highway(east-west of Nepal) or the Prithvi highway (Kathmandu-Pokhara).

Garmin does have maps of India & nepal, but not sure how accurate it will be.

I did not reply as I had not used this recently, but more than 3 years back, so my findings may not hold good at present.

3 years back the MMI and Satguide maps had far fewer POIs as compared to what is available now, and of course fewer town were covered, detail was much less. At that time the comparable OSM had a very similar map, but with less detail. However, where I stay in Mumbai, it had much more of a positional error, that is, the entire map appeared to somewhat shifted to one side as compared to the other maps, using the same track on my GPS as reference.

Perhaps that has been corrected now - as I said I have not used it for quite some time. For most purposes the MMI map is probably the best, and now it is not particularly expensive either.